Czeching up on our Prague-ress

   Phew. The problem with putting off blog writing because there's a lot to talk about is that the stuff to talk about keeps piling up! Time to dash one off before I end up having to write a novel. (You're welcome.)


   Okay, action. Where was I? Oh yeah, three and a half weeks ago. I am getting lazy.


   So, where I last left you was the day before a whirlwind weekend adventure in Prague! Rewind your mental clocks to Friday, 15 June.


   The majority of the day itself was fairly uneventful (I hope, because I don't remember anything of it). Until, that is, at around 6 PM when I scurried home, hat mich umgezogen (changed my clothes), and headed off to an evening choir concert at a church in nearby Bogenhausen, a yuppie neighborhood on the eastern side of the Isar. We sang through a fairly quick rendition of Palestrina's Canticum Canticorum (Song of Songs), checking watches all the while, hoping we would get out soon enough to catch some of the Euro Cup Germany/Greece match. Our director helped us out by starting at 8:00 PM on the dot and limiting himself to a five-minute intermission. The concert ended promptly at 9:30 (exactly the time halftime starts) and we all ran out the door, smart phones in hand, to the nearest beer garden/restaurant broadcasting the game, and were able to perfectly catch the second half. If you happened to have been watching the Euro Cup games (not holding my breath, don't worry), you may recall five of the six goals took place in the second half, so we chose the right part to watch!


   Fueled by the resounding German victory, we took a bus into the Innenstadt (city center), entertaining the other passengers with some random choral music on the way, interspersed, of course, by various German victory songs. My game plan was to stay out as long as possible, since my bus to Prague left from the northern bus station at 1:05 AM, so it made sense just to stay out until then. So we set off for Leopoldstraße, the large boulevard stretching from Odeonsplatz up through the University and the Siegestor (victory gate).


   Okay. To fully grasp the madness of this scene, we're going to have to do some exercising of the brain. Picture all the people that fit in your high school football stadium during homecoming. Got it? Good. Now multiply that by ten. Now make every one of those people drink at least four beers (that's European style, so I'm talking two liters). Now put all of them in Deutschland Fußball shirts and stick them on the same street. You've about got it. The scene was basically madness, but in the best of ways. There were police everywhere, but their only function was basically to make sure no one got hurt. Cars would slowly brave the masses, driving up over the base of the Siegestor, and wild fans would gather on either side and rock the cars back and forth, screaming cheers all the while. Every now and then, the crowd would sink as a whole to its collective knees, honoring (I guess) the football genius of their home country.


  It was something, all right.

 

 

  Thoroughly impressed by the competitive spirit of my host country, I sadly abandoned the scene and took the U-Bahn a few stops north, where I problem-less-ly boarded a large bus bound for Prague, buckled in, put in some ear plugs, and slept the night away.


  Okay, that last sentence was a lie. There are few things as uncomfortable as trying to sleep on a bouncy bus speeding down an autobahn, sitting fully upright on a slippery leather seat, while a large Czech teenager snores beside you. Let's just say I dozed my way northeast, waking fully up at about 5:45 AM as the sun rose (lies, this far north the sunrise is at like 4, but I denied it as long as possible) over the outskirts of Prague. We arrived successfully at the bus station at about 6:15, and, having told my parents I'd aim for 7:00 at their hotel, I successfully (first Czech interaction!) bought some coffee at the train station kiosk to break my 100 bill (in Korunas, that is. So about 5$). Fortunately the word "cappuccino" is fairly ubiquitous. Thank you, Italians, for so dominating the coffee industry. After fiddling with the ticket machine for a bit, I finally broke down and bought a subway ticket from the counter, and took the U-Bahn about four stops to my parents' hotel, arriving at their door at exactly 6:59 AM. (Let's just say Germany has done wonders for my punctuality.)

My first step after arriving

   And after that, the day sped by in normal touristy fashion! My parents and I breakfasted at their hotel, before checking out and towing their luggage (rolling suitcases + cobblestones is not the best combination) to their new hotel, as city centre-ish as it could possibly be (literally next to the gorgeous Tyn Church), and meeting up with their fellow travelers Neal and Lettie. Neal was my dad's best friend from high school, and they traveled Europe together quite a bit when they were young hooligans, so it was very cool that it worked out for them to meet up here! We took off, armed with only a guide book and the approximately fifteen words of Czech we knew (most of them phrases I had scrawled down in a notebook the night before: "Do you speak English?" "Excuse me!" "I don't understand," etc. And my father helpfully learned the word for beer, so we were ready for anything).

Our hotel was next door to that. NBD.

Good little tourist

Neal and Lettie

   Luggage safely stowed, we stopped only briefly to pick up some more coffee for me (I don't let little things like three hours of sleep on a bus slow me down in a new city!), and set off to see Prague properly, as only Rick Steves-equipped American tourists can. The day promised to be warm and lovely, so we were determined to take advantage of it. Stopping briefly in the main square to admire the clocktower, we boarded a tram and headed up to Petřín Hill, the large hill west of the Vltava River. Eschewing (foolishly) the line at the funicular, we opted instead the walk up the hill, proving to be quite an accomplishment for the heat of the day. Fortunately a beer garden halfway up called to us, giving me my first taste of Czech beer (in this case, Pilsner Urquell). We then headed up the rest of the way to see a gorgeous view of the city stretched out below us. The hill is topped by a huge tower, a miniature of the Eiffel Tower. Though much smaller, it's designed so that when combined with the height of the hill, it's exactly the same height as the Eiffel Tower. We splurged and took the elevator to the top of it to get the full effect.

I can't take these clowns anywhere

Petrin Tower

Dad, Neal, Lettie, Mom

Memorial to the victims of Communist rule

Looking down at the Charles Bridge and the old town

   Morning mission achieved, we headed back down the hill to get some lunch at a Rick Steves-recommended restaurant in Malá Strana, the "lesser quarter" district of Prague. Fed and watered, we wandered back over the famous Charles Bridge (managing not the get pick-pocketed in the meantime; my dear father took extra precautions against this possibility by safety-pinning his pocket shut) and meandered through the winding streets of the Staré Město (old town) and into Nové Město (new town), stopping only to purchase some gelato. Though I feel like I'm leaving a good four or so hours unaccounted for in there, so there may have been a stop at another beer garden somewhere in there.

Mom and Charles Bridge

Vltava River (or Die Moldau, if you're leaning towards German)

Charles Bridge

St. John of Nepomuk

   We headed then to Wenceslas Square, the long boulevard leading up the the National Museum and most famous as the site of the demonstrations during Prague Spring (1968) and the Velvet Revolution (1989). This is a period of history I for some reason know far too little about (I think all of my late-1989-history energy is concentrated a little further north), so it was fascinating to read about all the events that happened there in our guidebook. I won't go into much detail, but you can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution. There's something sort of magical about being on the site of something so incredible. I had the same kind of feeling about the Berlin Wall. In Wenceslas Square, Communism fell because 500,000 people, led by university students, came out em masse and protested something they thought was wrong. No violence, no war, just their presence. 

Sun setting down Wenceslas Square

Memorial to the two men who lit themselves on fire in protest of Communism

   Anyway, it was cool. We enjoyed the sunset from the steps of the giant statue of St. Wenceslas (also known as Good King Wenceslas, if you're a Christmas song fan. Or a Love Actually fan), even witnessing a real live protest in action (a rather crazed Czech fellow who'd been protesting for over 1,000 days straight about his land being seized by the government, or something like that). We then headed back to a restaurant around the corner from our hotel for some much-needed (at least for me) dinner. Not bad for a day's work. 


   The next day we awoke bright and not-so-early, breakfasted, and headed north from our hotel into the old Jewish quarter of the town. Prague has a long history of anti-Semitism; the first pogrom took place there in 1096 and the Jews were concentrated into a walled ghetto shortly thereafter. The old city was mostly demolished and remodeled in the mid 19th century, but the old synagogues and remnants of the old town still remain. The ghetto was astonishingly not destroyed during the Nazi occupation for a fairly terrifying reason: the Nazis planned on opening an "exotic museum of an extinct race" once their extermination of the Jews was complete; the Jewish museum in Prague is one of the largest and most complete because the Nazis collected artifacts from all of Bohemia and stored them for their future plans.


   Choosing not to pay the fee for entry to the museum (not one literal museum but seven different synagogues, all with various different exhibits), we wandered around from sight to sight, reading about the synagogues in our guidebook as we went, including the Staronova synagogue, Europe's oldest active synagogue, completed in 1270. We also stopped to admire a monument to Franz Kafka, as well as peek through to the old Jewish cemetery, a tiny little patch of ground allotted for the graves of supposedly over 100,000 people.

Klaus Synagogue and neighboring mortuary

So many graves piled into one space the ground is completely uneven

Dad attempting to look properly humble next to the greatness of Kafka

My father has trouble looking normal in pictures

  We then headed across the river and picked up a tram to take us up to the top of the castle. (Highly recommended, I may add, as then you get to do the entire walk downhill). Castle is really a misnomer; it's actually a series of palaces, mixed in with chapels, a cathedral, fancy-yet-quaint old neighborhoods, and the occasional ice cream shop, of course. We bought a ticket that covered entrance to most of the important places, including a walk through the secret parts of the cathedral, with peeks at St. Wenceslas's tomb, a walk through the interior of the old government palace (including a visit to the room where the defenestration took place!), and a stroll down the Golden Lane, quaintly tiny little houses where the goldsmiths used to work, including a house Franz Kafka stayed in for a while. 

St. Vitus Cathedral 

Dad pretending to be a cockroach in honor of Franz Kafka's house

Proper sunburnt tourist

David Cerny's "Czech" sculpture

   Sated on castles, we had a late lunch at a restaurant across from the Kafka museum (my dad and Neal dined on pork knuckles, but I rebelled against the fairly unimpressive Czech food at that location and got all the waiters laughing at my German-ness when I managed to put together a Semmelknödel mit Pfifferlingesoße (dumplings with mushroom sauce), a typical Bavarian dish. We finished the evening at a small creperie, finally having found some beer other than Pilsner Urquell (I confess I'm not a huge fan of Czech beer), and ended the night at a little courtyard restaurant with live music sung by an old Czech woman. It was a lovely night. We walked back to the hotel, content, at the perfect time so see the lights of the city stretch out over the river.

   My parents and I awoke early, caught a cab to the train station, and hopped on our respective buses: I, back to Munich, and my parents, off to Berlin, to meet again the next weekend when they came to Munich! 


  And that was our Prague adventure. Though I really enjoyed the city, I have to confess I didn't fall in love with it the way I did with Berlin or Vienna. It is incredibly beautiful and charming, and I feel like I got to know my way around pretty well, but I don't ever feel like I felt the heart of the city itself. Maybe it's just hard for a city that spent so long being beaten down under Communism then graduated so quickly to the third most popular tourist destination in Europe to retain its essence. 


   I also think the language was part of it. Though Prague's definitely not a city where you need to speak Czech (almost even less so than German in Germany, really; I suppose the difference is there's a fairly good probability that tourists know some German, whereas Czech isn't really one of those languages people just pick up due to exposure), it frustrates me incredibly to not be able to communicate in the local language. I disliked that about my experiences with Sofia as well, even having an excellent interpreter with me at all times. I pride myself on my ability to do well with languages, and having that skill taken away just makes me feel like another dumb American tourist. 


   But regardless, Prague and I got along just fine!


   I do apologize for leaving you still a couple of weeks behind, but it's past my bedtime and when a blog's too long no one reads it anyway! I promise, the next one will be coming very soon: parents in Munich! 

Family, Fußball, and Field Trips

    Well, here I am again. I know I've been awful about blog updating lately, but in my defense, life has been bumped WAY up from its usual lackadaisical pace and has been boppin' along.

    Warning you now, this will be a long entry. I'll title appropriately so you can skip to topics of interest (as could indeed be your wont!).

    And with that, jumping right into the first F:

Family!
     I was originally starting with fußball, but the family bit is too exciting to leave for later: my parents are here! They arrived for they three-ish week visit last Wednesday, and we had our grand reunion this past weekend in the lovely little city of Nürnberg (Nuremberg in English). Not having seen my dear parentals in just short of seven months (definitely the longest stretch of my life), the last week could not go fast enough. So Friday night I finished my chores with my host family, headed to the train station, and hopped on my ICE (Inter-City Express) train for Nuremberg. (A note about the coolness of ICE trains: though they can cost a lot of money, it's worth it: typical speeds are up to 230 km/hr (143 mph). Pretty cool when you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry! And sure enough, we made the speeding cars on the Autobahn look like traffic on the 405.) An hour and five minutes later, there I was! (About 50 minutes faster than a car could've made it, I may add.) My dad and I had plotted extensively where to meet in the train station, so I was feeling optimistisch, but upon disembarking from the train and heading into the main hall, I was greeted by exactly zero parents. Slightly irritated and a little worried, I wandered around for a while, but still nothing. Finally, I saw my dejected parents wandering out of a random hall. Turns out they had made the rookie mistake of trying to greet me on the platform, something visitors to Germany learn quickly not to do when they realize most platforms and train stations have anywhere from two to ten different exits! They quickly cheered up and we joyfully scampered off for a late dinner in a cool little Keller (cellar) in the center of Nuremburg, and following that, a beer or two in the gorgeous Hauptmarkt (main market square), enjoying the mild almost-summer night and the sky that didn't fully darken until past 10 PM.

Jolly little parents heading back from the train station

Looking up at the stunning St. Lorenz Church

Lovely little Pegnitz river by night

   We stayed out drinking (and some of us being awkwardly flirted with by the cross-eyed waiter, including being proffered a lollipop as a token of esteem. Guess who "us" was.) and enjoying family time until the (for my parents) incredible hour of midnight, and then headed back to the hotel.

    The next morning we were up bright and early at 10:30 AM (the latest my parents have slept since I was born, I guarantee you...oh jet lag, you're so silly!), and headed out to explore the city, starting with a delicious and enormous breakfast at the Cafe Literatur Haus, including a plate of the most extensive varieties and amounts of cheese I have ever seen, especially for nine euros. NOM. The day was, I kid you not, the single warmest day since I have been in Germany: about 87 degrees with a very generous helping of humidity. I am so out of practice with this whole heat thing.

    VERY well fed, we headed out through the city, following the suggested Rick Steves walking tour. (If you haven't traveled in Europe before and are planning to do so, toss your Lonely Planet and Fodor's out and get a Rick Steves. That guy knows his shit.) We walked throughout the old town, seeing some excellent churches, fountains, and a farmers' market (where Dad, in a concerted effort to speak some German, earnestly asked a seller "Sind die Tauben?" in reference to the green grapes we were looking at. Unfortunately for him, the word for grapes is Trauben: the shopkeeper did look rather confused to be asked whether the fruits we were looking at were pigeons). 

    We continued up to the small fortress at the top of the city, where we had a lovely view of the old town and some lovely rose gardens, then dodged into a small beer garden to avoid the coming rain and get Dad to stop whining for a beer. 

Enjoying the cool interior of the church

Mom illustrating one of the sins represented on the "Ship of Fools" statue behind her 

Courtyard of the fortress

Cute little fam! (Minus Elyo, of course!)

Looking down at the city

Mom smelling the roses

Dad, overjoyed at having found the beer he wanted

What a cool little thing

   We spent the rest of the day doing some more trotting around, drinking another beer, and finally making an expedition to a pre-scouted Indian restaurant for my belated birthday dinner. Delicious!

    Mom woke up slightly earlier the next day, thankfully. What a lazy bum. We followed the sounds of clanging dishes and falling forks to a generous and cheap breakfast buffet in the center of the city, and filled up on deliciousness before the day's trip. Dad was most proud of his intriguing combination of cocoa pudding and cornflakes. Oh yes, please do ask. 

   Breakfast accounted for, we headed town to the train station and hopped on a bus to the nearby "Documentation Center," the museum located at the former Nazi party rally grounds. If you're anything of a history buff, the name Nuremberg may sound familiar to you. More than likely this is due to the Nuremberg trials, wherein 25 of the leaders of the Third Reich were tried for their crimes after World War II. But before that, Nuremberg was famous not for trials but for parties! (Okay, the exclamation point was a little gratuitous. They weren't happy parties. I just feel like the word party always deserves proper recognition.) Hitler was a big fan of the city of Nuremberg, and pulled some strings to get the right guy in charge of it. When that was accomplished, Nuremberg became his chosen city for the yearly rallies of the Nazi party, held annually from 1923-1938 (in Nuremberg from '27 onward). And when I say rallies, we're talking rallies. Over 1,000,000 people flocked to the city yearly to see the rally and attendant parades, with Hitler himself presiding over the festivities. 

    So what we went to visit were the grounds of these rallies. Included in the enormous area is the massive Zeppelin Field, a huge stadium crowned by an enormous grandstand that once displayed enormous swastikas, where Hitler would address crowds of thousands; the unfinished Congress Hall, a masterpiece of engineering reminiscent of the Colosseum, planned to be able to seat 400,000; and the Great Street, a massive concrete path leading between the two for the parades to march along. 

   Enough talking, talk a look: 

Grandstand on the Zeppelin field

Looking waaaaay across at same grandstand, 80 years ago 

Me on the podium where Hitler gave his speeches

Told you

Congress Hall interior

Congress Hall from across the lake

Unfinished side of Congress Hall

    Sorry, getting political:

//////
   Tourism aspects aside, what I really took away from this experience, particularly the museum, is how much credit we give ourselves today. This could never happen here, we say. We're much better people than the Germans, we say. They were horrible people, we say. But honestly, the scariest part of all of this is how easily it happened. Though I'm definitely, definitely, definitely not comparing anything in the US to Germany during the Third Reich, it's foolish to try and explain it away by clinging to the idea those Germans in the 20s, 30s, and 40s were somehow worse people than we are.  

    And speaking about the Holocaust, it's easy to condemn it for the terrible thing it is while ignoring how it started. Coming from California, I certainly see racial inequality. It's everywhere. But you know what, it's okay that Mexicans work longer hours under terrible conditions for incredibly little pay. It's not like it's white people who have to suffer that. They're just Mexicans. If we rough them up a little when they're deported, they're just Mexicans. They don't belong; they're not like us. If a shop that sells Mexican goods gets vandalized, not really a big deal. Guess what: that's how Germans felt about the Jews before World War II. Their store windows got smashed? No big deal. They're deporting them to Poland? Well, they aren't German, they don't belong here anyway. No big deal. Every time you fall into the trap of thinking it's okay something is happening to certain people, you let yourself believe it's okay, these people aren't as good as me, these people don't belong. And therefore it's okay when they're tortured, harassed, shipped off to concentration camps...

   I know I'm taking this totally too far. The Holocaust was not caused by ordinary people, it was a terrible brain child of a few sick and corrupt people with too much power. But the only way it ever went as far as it did was because it drew from the attitudes that already existed. And we teach our children these things. 

From the Documentation Center Museum: A drawing by a first grader. "Jews are our misfortune." I repeat, a FIRST GRADER. That's a six-year-old, friends. If nothing else is terrifying, this should be.

////////

  Okay, I'm done. I swear. 

   Anyway, after our museum visit, we, of course, took a brief stop at a beer garden, then headed back into town to watch the Germany-Denmark football match. We ended up at a great little restaurant next to a public viewing of the game, and enjoyed a delicious dinner, beer, and the game for a great ending to the weekend.

Fußball
    I can hear everyone who knows me at all laughing already. Shut it. I am so into this. To prove it, I shall set my scene and tell you I am snuggled in bed typing whilst watching the Portugal/Czech Republic match. Don't even try to test me.

    Okay, backing up. For those who aren't as into international activities, I'll explain briefly. For starters,  fußball is the German for (not too hard, now) football. Which is the proper name for soccer in every country that isn't the US. We're currently smackdab in the middle of the EuroCup (smaller version of the World Cup), being played this year in Poland and Ukraine. Germany is, unsurprisingly, kicking ass and taking names (at this point, anyway. Send them your thoughts and prayers against the Greek tomorrow; let's just say Greece has a lot of pent-up anger where Germany is concerned).

   Why, you ask, am I suddenly so enamored with a sport I don't play and a country that isn't mine? The answer's fairly simple. In the US, we really never have a chance to be united as a country cheering on a single team. The sports we really care about (baseball, basketball, American football) are almost completely unique to the US, so if anything, they're divisive rather than unifying. And the US isn't good enough at soccer to make the World Cup that intense of a matter. But here, where soccer is the lifeblood of nearly every nation, there is almost literally not a single house lacking a German flag, a single car without flag mirror covers (seriously), and on game days, scarcely a single person lacking a German national team shirt. Going out to a bar or restaurant to watch the game means being crammed into a room at maximum capacity with tons of soccer worshippers, many of them wearing German flags as capes and never losing a chance to chant a German cheer. It's really freaking fun, actually. And the enthusiasm is contagious. It's also nice that because I'm lucky enough to live in the German staat (state) with the best soccer team (FC Bayern, who, as you may recall, I saw play live), a cheery 11/23 of the national team is drawn from FC Bayern, so they're like old friends!

Leigh and I at the Germany-Netherlands match, reppin' our Deutschland gear

Germany-Denmark match in Nuremberg

Anyway, enough with the football. Just take my word that it's way exciting. And if you need some eye candy, google Mario Gomez, the guy who scored 3/5 of the German Euro Cup goals so far. He's beautiful. (Another reason I like soccer: players are vastly more attractive and age-appropriate than the great galoots who play baseball and American football. Woof.)

Field Trips

   Misleading title. Just one field trip. It sounded better in the plural when I wrote it, for some reason. Anyway, Monday I had the joyous (read: exhausting) task of accompanying Cliona on her field trip with the English kindergarten. We drove east out of Munich to the Bergtierpark, a kind of zoo for animals like deer, boars, horses, cows, weasels, und so weiter. Remember my earlier comment about the warmest day in Germany thus far? Well, this one blew it out of the water. Mid-90s, humid as death, and six hours tramping around a huge shadeless park with twenty-odd 3-5 year olds. Pulling a wagon full of backpacks, I might add. 

   But it was a lot of fun. The majority of kids (and therefore parents) in this kindergarten are from the UK, and it is a different experience spending an extended period of time with women who call children "poppet" in all seriousness. But they're all very nice and it was a good day. Cliona was probably rather disadvantaged by having me there, as having an au pair around makes it very easy to not go to the trouble of playing with the kids, but I nipped her "carry me"s in the bud faster than you can say spoiled child. No way, man. 

  The funniest part was no doubt the kids, with their hands overflowing with animal feed, running pell-mell after the terrified animals who just wanted to get away from the screamers. It was pretty hilarious. Thankfully the animals were interspersed with occasional playgrounds, and the pizza for lunch assuaged most of the whining. 

Lucky girl riding in the wagon!

And that's that! Okay, I'm skipping a major thing from a couple of weeks ago, but I'll come back to that. The last couple o' days have been pretty normal. The weather lends itself well to lots of ice cream trips and playing in the sprinklers with the kiddies, so it's pretty stress-free. Yesterday Leigh, Paulo and I played tennis at Olympia Park! It was great fun. And today I hightailed it at the crack of dawn to meet my parents in Salzburg and have a touristy three/four hours. 

    Tomorrow's agenda: do chores, pack, pick up Cliona and go to dancing, get ready, sing a concert, and leave on a bus for Prague at 1 AM! Ready, go.